


A Little Like Famous Last Words

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: But mostly fluff, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Give Adam a Dog 2k20, Injury Recovery, Kubrick Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21941992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: It took Adam three months to work up the courage to touch Kubrick again.Adam gets his dog back.
Relationships: Adam Jensen & Kubrick
Comments: 24
Kudos: 62
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Little Like Famous Last Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Requiem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiem/gifts).



It took Adam three months to work up the courage to touch Kubrick again.

Sarif was patient, endlessly patient—the boarding fees couldn't be _too_ much more, after all, when he was already paying for Adam's apartment and medical bills and a whole host of things it made Adam dizzy just to think about—but even still, as the months dragged on Adam had to admit his excuses were getting less and less convincing.

He hadn't dropped a cup in four weeks, hadn't smashed a plate in six. The mirrors... well, he was still breaking the mirrors, but that didn't mean much; the thought of looking at _Kubrick_ didn't make him shudder.

And still—he kept saying _next week, next week_ , kept waking from dreams where he broke him the same way he'd broken everything else in his apartment at least once.

But Kubrick deserved better than a cold, impersonal kennel. And Adam might be half the man he used to be— _literally,_ he thought, the kind of godawful humor that would've made Megan roll her eyes if she were still around to hear him—but he knew better than this. If he couldn't even walk his damn dog, he'd never manage to make it back through the doors of Sarif Industries.

He called them on a Monday, at six in the morning exactly. It gave him less of a chance to change his mind.

They asked him if he was ready to come pick Kubrick up. He almost said no, almost hung up and sent the boss an email. Sarif could order a car to bring Kubrick home, save Adam the humiliation of having to show up at a doggy day-care kitted out in mil-spec limbs. He'd probably do it, too; he'd done everything else Adam asked so far.

But... Kubrick was his dog, after all.

Sure, Adam told the woman on the other end of the line, he'd love to come by. He'd be there in an hour.

He hung up, and then spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure out which coat did the best job of not drawing attention to his hands.

* * *

Dog people were legally obligated to give their businesses pun names, Adam was pretty sure, and Kubrick's home away from home was no exception: _Canine to Five_ was a mix of gray and orange and blue tiles and a gleaming glass windowfront, all set half an hour's walk up Woodward. It didn't look like a bad place, at least: there was a big patch of fenced-in astroturf behind the building, more than enough for a whole pack of dogs to run around in, and it was clean.

It was almost impossibly friendly, the least threatening place Adam had ever seen, but the closer he got to the storefront the more he wanted to sprint in the opposite direction.

It wasn't the stares. He'd expected those, and he'd gotten them the whole long walk down Woodward: past Comerica and Little Caesar's, past the restaurants that lined the street, past the panhandlers who'd gone still and silent when they caught sight of him. Nothing new there. But his body was still surprising him—thirty minutes' walk and his breathing hadn't changed at all, his legs didn't feel even the slightest hint of strain. He'd been in shape before the attack; this was different. Mechanical.

 _Breathe_ , he told himself. He wasn't the Terminator, no matter how he might feel right now.

"Ugh," he said to the sidewalk, and then he steeled his nerves—the organic and the steel ones both—and pulled open the door.

The people inside stared. Of course they stared; there were paintings of dogs on the walls, laminated pictures of people smiling with their pets taped to the desk. None of the lobby employees could be much older than twenty-five. He looked about as out of place here as... well, as if it were the Terminator who'd stepped through the door.

It would be better if he could think of any other movie. _Terminator_ hadn't ended well for the dog.

"Um," said the woman behind the front desk, and then, again, a record stuck scratching over a groove: "Um?"

"I'm here to pick up my dog," Adam said, a little helplessly.

"Oh!" Thankfully, having a script to follow seemed to bypass her nerves; she gave him a smile that actually looked half-genuine as she pulled something up on her glass screen. "I—yes, of course, thank you. Sorry about that. "he glanced up at him, something sheepish in her eyes. "I'm Kelly, and if you could tell me your dog's name?"

"Kubrick."

Megan had always liked to say it was because he was such a smart dog. Really, it was because Adam's copy of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ was the first thing he'd chewed up after they'd brought him home.

"Wait, seriously?" the woman—Kelly—asked, and then she _really_ looked at him. She took in the gold lining on his limbs, the chrome of them, the various blades and reinforced segments that not even the geniuses at SI could fully disguise as something civilian. "Huh. That makes sense. Been out of the country?"

"Something like that."

"We've all been wondering—but, oh, Kubrick's such a sweetheart, he's been perfect. I'll be sad to see him go, but it's great he's finally getting to head back home."

"Yeah." Adam shrugged. He just hoped Kubrick would like being back home too.

She gave him a glass tablet with a virtual pile of paperwork to sort through—confirming he was who he said he was, confirming David had paid like he said he had, all the hassle associated with having left his dog in someone else's care for months—and the more Adam went through it the more he started to wonder.

Kubrick hadn't seen him in months, hadn't lived with him for longer than that. Hell, he'd spent more of his life with Megan than with Adam. He hadn't even stopped to consider it until now, but—would Kubrick recognize him? His shape, his smell, the sound of his voice... there wasn't much left of the old him that a dog might understand.

When he finished, he brought the tablet back up to the front desk. Kelly sorted through it a moment, then gave him another only-slightly-nervous smile as she stood. "Perfect, everything's in order. Just a second."

She disappeared into the back. Adam put his hands in his pockets and stared at the wall, and waited.

* * *

There was something a little scary about how far away he could hear Kubrick coming. He'd known his hearing was enhanced with the rest of it, but—hearing nails clicking on tile through _multiple_ walls, knowing what it meant, was something else entirely.

He stood straight-backed. Unmoving.

Finally the door opened, and he steeled himself—

and Kubrick _yelped_ , and lurched forward, and nearly choked himself on his leash with how hard he was trying to run towards Adam. Tail wagging, feet _tap-tap-tapping_ against the floor, making noises that were somewhere between whines and howls...

"Ah," Adam said. He knelt down on the floor, one knee against the tile, and held out an arm. "C'mere, boy."

"You want me to let him go?" Kelly asked. She was just barely managing to hold her grip on his leash. "He's been an angel here, I swear, but—he might rip your coat, he's just so excited—"

"That's fine," he told her, and she let the leash go with a look of relief on her face, and Adam had less than half a second to admire just how _good_ his eyes were at tracking moving objects before fifty pounds of dog slammed face-first into him.

Paws on his coat, tongue swiping across his face and cheek and ears and neck and every other part of him Kubrick could reach—and Megan had always gotten mad if Adam let Kubrick jump on him, said it was bad for his training, but right now Adam had never cared about anything less than that. He sat down the rest of the way, let Kubrick crawl into his lap—tail still wagging away, slapping at his arms now—and got his arms around Kubrick so he could bury his face into his scruff and all of the ridiculously long fur there.

"You're heavy now, aren't you?" Adam muttered. He'd grown so much, the past three months—he was hardly even a puppy anymore, even if he still had all the energy of one.

Kubrick barked a little half-bark, collapsing happily against Adam's chest with his tail still wagging as fast as a whip. And Adam wasn't about to tear up—not here, not now, and _especially_ not in front of other people—but he let himself sit there for a while, curled around Kubrick, with his face hidden so he could pretend no one was watching him.

"Good boy," he murmured into Kubrick's fur, over and over again, like a mantra. "Good boy, good boy."

* * *

That night Kubrick slept curled on the foot of Adam's bed, his head flopped against one of Adam's ankles and his feet splayed out and digging into Adam's side. If he realized his pillow was made of metal and carbon-nanofiber, he certainly didn't care, and when Adam looked at Kubrick—blissfully tired, blissfully happy—he could almost think that he didn't either.


End file.
